Small Names, Big Checks
News: Aside from the usual corporate suspects, there's a second tier of (deliberately) low-profile donors underwriting Bush's inaugural.
January 20, 2005
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Therese Shaheen, the former U.S. envoy to Taiwan, wrote a $250,000 check so that her Asian business clients can rub shoulders this week with George W. Bush. "Outsiders are fascinated by the president's inaugural, so it's nice for them," says Shaheen, who resigned her post as the head of the U.S. diplomatic mission to Taiwan last April and returned to the private sector. "The inauguration is always good for business development."
But only a few people, including the president's staff, know that Shaheen is responsible for the donation, which entitles her clients to tickets to top-tier events with President Bush and Vice President Cheney. That is because she donated the funds through the Strongbow Technologies Corporation, a company that lists no phone number and whose mailing address is a post office box in the Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C. According to the State of Delaware, the company no longer even exists under that name, having been reincorporated in December as U.S. Asia Strongbow Technologies Corporation. "I'm just starting it back up," Shaheen explains, adding that the company has several new contracts, which she would not discuss.
As of last week, nearly 200 corporate and individual patrons of President Bush had given between $25,000 and $250,000 to enjoy VIP access at inaugural parties with White House officials. The group comprises the usual roll call of corporations and wealthy executives with significant government interests -- energy firms, sub-prime bank lenders, federal contractors, and pharmaceutical companies. "It's the modern version of selling access to the White House," says Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a group that advocates stricter campaign finance laws. The 2002 campaign finance reforms outlawed direct contributions to candidates in excess of $2,000, but it left open loopholes for donating unlimited sums to the party conventions and the inauguration. The White House has voluntarily limited the size of individual inaugural checks to $250,000. "There are only a couple of avenues left where you can put up a large sum of money that is of direct value to the president," Wertheimer said.
Nearly all of the inaugural donors have benefited—or hope to benefit—from the President's policies. For many of these companies, a six-figure donation is but a small part of their multi-million dollar lobbying strategies. Among the $250,000 donors are name brands like Exxon Mobil, Ameriquest Capital, FedEx, Bristol Myers Squibb and Lockheed Martin. The Nuclear Energy Institute, which has received White House backing for new nuclear power plants, chipped in $100,000.
But there is also a second tier of smaller donors, like Strongbow, whose obscure names and well-hidden interests easily skirt below the media radar. Valhi Inc., for instance, a Dallas investment firm controlled by billionaire Harold Simmons, donated $100,000 to the inaugural bash. The check came just four months after President Bush took Simmons' side in a trade dispute with Russia, a move that could mean millions of dollars in new sales for one of his companies, The Titanium Metals Corporation. After the announcement that the White House would raise tariffs on Russian metal imports, the CEO of Titanium Metals publicly thanked the Bush Administration for its "strong support."
Carl Lindner, the former owner of the Chiquita Banana brand and one of the most reliable of Republican moneymen, gave $250,000 under his own name. But so did two companies he controls, American Financial and New Energy Corp. The lesser-known New Energy, which is based in South Bend, Ind., is one of the nation's largest manufacturers of ethanol, a corn-based alternative and additive to gasoline, and a longstanding recipient of federal research funding. It will likely be among the biggest winners of the Energy Bill, which Congress plans to reconsider later this year. A previous version of the bill, which failed to pass in 2003, would have tripled the amount of ethanol produced in the U.S., costing taxpayers nearly $5 billion, according to the environmental group Friends of the Earth.
Nursing home companies, which depend heavily on federal reimbursements, will also join the President as inaugural guests. John Elliot Associates, a company controlled by the owner of AMFM Inc. nursing homes in West Virginia, gave $30,000, while Beverly Enterprises, an Arkansas nursing home company, gave $70,000. These companies have benefited from several White House decisions over the last four years to maintain higher Medicare reimbursement rates for nursing home care, says Janet Wells, who directs the National Citizens Center for Nursing Home Reform. "Keeping the federal funding stream flowing through Medicare and Medicaid is very important to the industry," she said.
Several of the President's longtime supporters have kept their names off the donor list by giving through rather innocuous-sounding investment companies. The California investor Duane Roberts gave $250,000 through his investment company Entrepreneurial Capital. Joseph Canizaro, the New Orleans real estate magnate, gave $250,000 through Corporate Capital LLC, one of his holding companies. The financier Mercer Reynolds, a longtime fundraiser for President Bush, gave through Linger Longer Development, a Georgia-based golf course developer he owns. Another company, International Traders Inc. of Nashville gave $30,000 to the inauguration, though there is no firm by that name incorporated in the state of Tennessee and the company has no listed phone number or address in Nashville. "These are probably not the primary revenue sources for these donors," says Sheila Krumholz, a campaign finance researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics. "I wouldn't be surprised if people were either trying to obfuscate or else trying to bring publicity for companies that aren't as prominent."
Other donors to the inauguration are working hard to ensure the President's continued support of Israeli policies in the Middle East. The inauguration has received checks worth $1.4 million from the families of eight board members of the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group that has vocally supported U.S. funding of Israel and opposed Clinton Administration efforts to forge peace with the Palestinians. Republican lobbyists have also pulled out their checkbooks. Clark Consulting Group's Kenneth Kies, who was widely credited with inserting significant sections of the last corporate tax bill, gave $25,000. David Girard diCarlo, a lobbyist who has worked both for the 2000 Bush campaign and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, gave $50,000, while his firm, Blank Rome, pitched in another $200,000.
Shaheen, the owner of Strongbow, has no plans to identify the foreign clients she is bringing to dine and dance with the President. But it is not hard to guess why they are working with her. In addition to her State Department experience, Shaheen's former business partner, and the former co-owner of Strongbow, was Richard Lawless, an ex-CIA agent who now works at the Pentagon as deputy undersecretary of defense for Asia-Pacific affairs. He has recently been discussed as a candidate to replace the head of the CIA's clandestine unit. Lawless and Shaheen founded a company in 1987 called U.S. Asia Commercial, which partnered with the president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to work on deals with Asian investors. Shaheen's husband is Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita, who also serves as a special assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Nonetheless, she said her involvement in the inauguration was not political. "We are not taking any Taiwanese government officials," she said. Her guests, she added, are "business people and business people only."
CORRECTION: Several lists of the inaugural donors, including one provided by Political MoneyLine, listed a $30,000 gift from International Traders Inc. of Nashville, Tenn., a company that has no incorporation records in that state. The Bush Inaugural site lists the same contribution coming from Nashville, North Carolina. In North Carolina, International Traders is incorporated in Rocky Mount by Jerry L. Wordsworth. He is the chairman, president and CEO of MBM Corporation, one of the largest private food wholesalers for restaurants in the nation, and an active donor to both Democratic and Republican candidates. He is also an owner of the Carolina Panthers.
Michael Scherer is Washington correspondent for Mother Jones.
